SULEIMANIYA, Iraq, July 24 (AFP) - Around 500 intellectuals and students marched through the city of Suleimaniya on Saturday to demand an independent Kurdistan, incorporating Iraq's main northern oil centre of Kirkuk.
Holding aloft banners saying "Independence for Kurdistan," and "Kirkuk: Kurdish City," the protest flouted a ban issued by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the northeastern Iraqi province of Suleimaniya.
Delegates submitted a memorandum to the PUK's provincial administration.
The document, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, called for Kurdistan's independence from Iraq and for former strongman Saddam Hussein to be tried by an international court in which Kurds have a voice.
It also rejected the former regime's policy of "arabisation," in which Kurds say thousands of their people were forced to flee the country's oil-rich areas to make way for a Saddam-inspired Arab resettlement policy.
Demonstrations calling for an independent Kurdistan are rare in Iraq, where neither of the two mainstream Kurdish parties, the PUK, nor its rival Kurdistan Democratic Party, include independence as an aim in party literature.
Both organisations have subscribed to the country's interim constitution, which was signed into law under the former US-led occupation authority and enshrines the principal of a federal Iraq.